How to escape education’s death valley | Sir Ken Robinson

How to escape education’s death valley | Sir Ken Robinson

Translator: Joseph Geni
Reviewer: Morton Bast Thank you very much. I moved to America 12 years ago
with my wife Terry and our two kids. Actually, truthfully, we moved
to Los Angeles — (Laughter) thinking we were moving
to America, but anyway — (Laughter) It’s a short plane ride
from Los Angeles to America. (Laughter) I got here 12 years ago, and when I got here,
I was told various things, like, “Americans don’t get irony.” (Laughter) Have you come across this idea? It’s not true. I’ve traveled the whole length
and breadth of this country. I have found no evidence
that Americans don’t get irony. It’s one of those cultural myths, like, “The British are reserved.” (Laughter) I don’t know why people think this. We’ve invaded every country
we’ve encountered. (Laughter) But it’s not true Americans
don’t get irony, but I just want you to know
that that’s what people are saying about you behind your back. You know, so when you leave
living rooms in Europe, people say, thankfully,
nobody was ironic in your presence. (Laughter) But I knew that Americans get irony when I came across that legislation,
“No Child Left Behind.” (Laughter) Because whoever thought
of that title gets irony. (Laughter) Don’t they? (Applause) Because it’s leaving
millions of children behind. Now I can see that’s not a very attractive
name for legislation: “Millions of Children Left Behind.” I can see that. What’s the plan? We propose to leave
millions of children behind, and here’s how it’s going to work. And it’s working beautifully. (Laughter) In some parts of the country, 60 percent of kids drop out
of high school. In the Native American communities, it’s 80 percent of kids. If we halved that number, one estimate is it would create
a net gain to the U.S. economy over 10 years,
of nearly a trillion dollars. From an economic point of view, this is good math, isn’t it,
that we should do this? It actually costs an enormous amount to mop up the damage
from the dropout crisis. But the dropout crisis
is just the tip of an iceberg. What it doesn’t count
are all the kids who are in school but being disengaged
from it, who don’t enjoy it, who don’t get any real benefit from it. And the reason is not
that we’re not spending enough money. America spends more money on education
than most other countries. Class sizes are smaller
than in many countries. And there are hundreds
of initiatives every year to try and improve education. The trouble is, it’s all going
in the wrong direction. There are three principles
on which human life flourishes, and they are contradicted
by the culture of education under which most teachers have to labor and most students have to endure. The first is this, that human beings
are naturally different and diverse. Can I ask you, how many of you
have got children of your own? Okay. Or grandchildren. How about two children or more? Right. And the rest of you
have seen such children. (Laughter) Small people wandering about. (Laughter) I will make you a bet, and I am confident
that I will win the bet. If you’ve got two children or more, I bet you they are completely
different from each other. Aren’t they? (Applause) You would never confuse them, would you? Like, “Which one are you? Remind me.” (Laughter) “Your mother and I need
some color-coding system so we don’t get confused.” Education under “No Child Left Behind” is based on not diversity but conformity. What schools are encouraged
to do is to find out what kids can do across
a very narrow spectrum of achievement. One of the effects
of “No Child Left Behind” has been to narrow the focus
onto the so-called STEM disciplines. They’re very important. I’m not here to argue
against science and math. On the contrary, they’re necessary
but they’re not sufficient. A real education has to give equal weight to the arts, the humanities,
to physical education. An awful lot of kids, sorry, thank you — (Applause) One estimate in America currently
is that something like 10 percent of kids, getting on that way, are being diagnosed
with various conditions under the broad title
of attention deficit disorder. ADHD. I’m not saying there’s no such thing. I just don’t believe
it’s an epidemic like this. If you sit kids down, hour after hour, doing low-grade clerical work, don’t be surprised if they start
to fidget, you know? (Laughter) (Applause) Children are not, for the most part,
suffering from a psychological condition. They’re suffering from childhood. (Laughter) And I know this because
I spent my early life as a child. I went through the whole thing. Kids prosper best with a broad curriculum
that celebrates their various talents, not just a small range of them. And by the way, the arts
aren’t just important because they improve math scores. They’re important because they speak
to parts of children’s being which are otherwise untouched. The second, thank you — (Applause) The second principle
that drives human life flourishing is curiosity. If you can light the spark
of curiosity in a child, they will learn without any further
assistance, very often. Children are natural learners. It’s a real achievement
to put that particular ability out, or to stifle it. Curiosity is the engine of achievement. Now the reason I say this is because one of the effects
of the current culture here, if I can say so, has been to de-professionalize teachers. There is no system in the world
or any school in the country that is better than its teachers. Teachers are the lifeblood
of the success of schools. But teaching is a creative profession. Teaching, properly conceived,
is not a delivery system. You know, you’re not there just
to pass on received information. Great teachers do that, but what great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage. You see, in the end,
education is about learning. If there’s no learning going on,
there’s no education going on. And people can spend an awful lot of time discussing education
without ever discussing learning. The whole point of education
is to get people to learn. An old friend of mine —
actually very old, he’s dead. (Laughter) That’s as old as it gets, I’m afraid. (Laughter) But a wonderful guy he was,
wonderful philosopher. He used to talk about the difference between the task
and achievement senses of verbs. You can be engaged
in the activity of something, but not really be
achieving it, like dieting. (Laughter) It’s a very good example. There he is. He’s dieting. Is he losing any weight? Not really. (Laughter) Teaching is a word like that. You can say, “There’s Deborah,
she’s in room 34, she’s teaching.” But if nobody’s learning anything, she may be engaged in the task of teaching
but not actually fulfilling it. The role of a teacher
is to facilitate learning. That’s it. And part of the problem is, I think, that the dominant culture
of education has come to focus on not teaching and learning, but testing. Now, testing is important. Standardized tests have a place. But they should not be
the dominant culture of education. They should be diagnostic.
They should help. (Applause) If I go for a medical examination,
I want some standardized tests. I do. I want to know
what my cholesterol level is compared to everybody else’s
on a standard scale. I don’t want to be told on some scale
my doctor invented in the car. (Laughter) “Your cholesterol
is what I call Level Orange.” “Really?” (Laughter) “Is that good?” “We don’t know.” (Laughter) But all that should support learning. It shouldn’t obstruct it,
which of course it often does. So in place of curiosity,
what we have is a culture of compliance. Our children and teachers are encouraged
to follow routine algorithms rather than to excite that power
of imagination and curiosity. And the third principle is this:
that human life is inherently creative. It’s why we all have different résumés. We create our lives, and we can recreate them
as we go through them. It’s the common currency
of being a human being. It’s why human culture
is so interesting and diverse and dynamic. I mean, other animals may well have
imaginations and creativity, but it’s not so much
in evidence, is it, as ours? I mean, you may have a dog. And your dog may get depressed. You know, but it doesn’t listen
to Radiohead, does it? (Laughter) And sit staring out the window
with a bottle of Jack Daniels. (Laughter) “Would you like to come for a walk?” “No, I’m fine.” (Laughter) “You go. I’ll wait. But take pictures.” (Laughter) We all create our own lives
through this restless process of imagining alternatives
and possibilities, and one of the roles of education is to awaken and develop
these powers of creativity. Instead, what we have
is a culture of standardization. Now, it doesn’t have to be that way. It really doesn’t. Finland regularly comes out on top
in math, science and reading. Now, we only know
that’s what they do well at, because that’s all that’s being tested. That’s one of the problems of the test. They don’t look for other things
that matter just as much. The thing about work in Finland is this: they don’t obsess about those disciplines. They have a very broad
approach to education, which includes humanities,
physical education, the arts. Second, there is no standardized
testing in Finland. I mean, there’s a bit, but it’s not what gets
people up in the morning, what keeps them at their desks. The third thing —
and I was at a meeting recently with some people from Finland,
actual Finnish people, and somebody from the American system
was saying to the people in Finland, “What do you do
about the drop-out rate in Finland?” And they all looked a bit
bemused, and said, “Well, we don’t have one. Why would you drop out? If people are in trouble,
we get to them quite quickly and we help and support them.” Now people always say, “Well, you know, you can’t compare
Finland to America.” No. I think there’s a population
of around five million in Finland. But you can compare it
to a state in America. Many states in America
have fewer people in them than that. I mean, I’ve been
to some states in America and I was the only person there. (Laughter) Really. Really. I was asked to lock up when I left. (Laughter) But what all the high-performing
systems in the world do is currently what is not evident, sadly, across the systems in America — I mean, as a whole. One is this: they individualize teaching and learning. They recognize that it’s students
who are learning and the system has to engage them, their curiosity, their individuality,
and their creativity. That’s how you get them to learn. The second is that they attribute
a very high status to the teaching profession. They recognize
that you can’t improve education if you don’t pick great people to teach
and keep giving them constant support
and professional development. Investing in professional
development is not a cost. It’s an investment, and every other country
that’s succeeding well knows that, whether it’s Australia, Canada, South Korea, Singapore,
Hong Kong or Shanghai. They know that to be the case. And the third is, they devolve responsibility
to the school level for getting the job done. You see, there’s a big difference here between going into a mode of command
and control in education — That’s what happens in some systems. Central or state governments decide, they know best and they’re going
to tell you what to do. The trouble is that education
doesn’t go on in the committee rooms
of our legislative buildings. It happens in classrooms and schools, and the people who do it
are the teachers and the students, and if you remove their discretion,
it stops working. You have to put it back to the people. (Applause) There is wonderful work
happening in this country. But I have to say it’s happening in spite of the dominant
culture of education, not because of it. It’s like people are sailing
into a headwind all the time. And the reason I think is this: that many of the current policies are based on mechanistic
conceptions of education. It’s like education
is an industrial process that can be improved
just by having better data, and somewhere in the back of the mind
of some policy makers is this idea that if we fine-tune it
well enough, if we just get it right, it will all hum along perfectly
into the future. It won’t, and it never did. The point is that education
is not a mechanical system. It’s a human system. It’s about people, people who either do want
to learn or don’t want to learn. Every student who drops
out of school has a reason for it which is rooted in their own biography. They may find it boring. They may find it irrelevant. They may find that it’s at odds with
the life they’re living outside of school. There are trends,
but the stories are always unique. I was at a meeting recently
in Los Angeles of — they’re called alternative
education programs. These are programs designed
to get kids back into education. They have certain common features. They’re very personalized. They have strong support for the teachers, close links with the community
and a broad and diverse curriculum, and often programs which involve students
outside school as well as inside school. And they work. What’s interesting to me is,
these are called “alternative education.” (Laughter) You know? And all the evidence
from around the world is, if we all did that, there’d be
no need for the alternative. (Applause) (Applause ends) So I think we have to embrace
a different metaphor. We have to recognize
that it’s a human system, and there are conditions
under which people thrive, and conditions under which they don’t. We are after all organic creatures, and the culture of the school
is absolutely essential. Culture is an organic term, isn’t it? Not far from where I live
is a place called Death Valley. Death Valley is the hottest,
driest place in America, and nothing grows there. Nothing grows there
because it doesn’t rain. Hence, Death Valley. In the winter of 2004,
it rained in Death Valley. Seven inches of rain fell
over a very short period. And in the spring of 2005,
there was a phenomenon. The whole floor of Death Valley
was carpeted in flowers for a while. What it proved is this: that Death Valley isn’t dead. It’s dormant. Right beneath the surface
are these seeds of possibility waiting for the right conditions
to come about, and with organic systems,
if the conditions are right, life is inevitable. It happens all the time. You take an area, a school, a district, you change the conditions, give people
a different sense of possibility, a different set of expectations,
a broader range of opportunities, you cherish and value the relationships
between teachers and learners, you offer people
the discretion to be creative and to innovate in what they do, and schools that were once
bereft spring to life. Great leaders know that. The real role of leadership
in education — and I think it’s true
at the national level, the state level, at the school level — is not and should not be
command and control. The real role of leadership
is climate control, creating a climate of possibility. And if you do that, people will rise to it and achieve things
that you completely did not anticipate and couldn’t have expected. There’s a wonderful quote
from Benjamin Franklin. “There are three sorts
of people in the world: Those who are immovable, people who don’t get it, or don’t want to do anything about it; there are people who are movable, people who see the need for change and are prepared to listen to it; and there are people who move, people who make things happen.” And if we can encourage more people,
that will be a movement. And if the movement is strong enough, that’s, in the best sense
of the word, a revolution. And that’s what we need. Thank you very much. (Applause) Thank you very much. (Applause)

NAtional ZIonist J E W school curriculum In the early 1950s, the Reece Commission uncovered minutes from the "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace", dated 1910; the minutes reveal that the Carnegie trustees asked themselves this question: “Is there anyway known to man more effective than war to so alter the life of an entire people?”…Fast forward ten (10) years and the "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace", meeting minutes, shift their interest over to preventing what they call, "a reversion of life in the United States prior to 1914, with initiation of World War I". At that point, they come to the conclusion that, to prevent a reversion, we must control education.…The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace approached the Rockefeller Foundation with a suggestion: Domestic education would be handled by the Rockefeller Foundation International education would be handled by the Carnegie Endowment

The biggest factor in having functional children that don't drop out of school and are generally successful in life is very simple. It is children raised by FATHERS do better in many ways. Correlates perfectly across races and income. Focusing on the education system is misdirection and typical of the the leftist BS spouted by TED talks.

My son dropped out of the 9th grade precisely because of the rigid industrial assembly line of education that the high school demanded that he "learn" under. His elementary school had given him a fair amount of reponsibility for his own learning (in 7th and 8th grades especially) and he loved that!! He loved being allowed to do his work at his own pace and then do his own thing for the rest of the week. He got high marks in his report cards and he won several awards at the 8th grade graduation ceremony. High School immediately shut that down and he felt so stifled, he could not even finish out the whole year!! So he has been homeschooling and following his passions ever since.

When I was in school, back in the 1980s, I was bored, but I was a good girl and I did not do anything to rock the boat. It never once occurred to me to drop out. When I was discussing with my parents about what i should do at university, they said i should do what my father does (he was an accountant) because that was a good career to be involved in. I wanted to go into social science, but my dad said that the only thing you can do with that is to be a teacher, and "you dont want to be a teacher do you?" No I did not want to be a teacher.

I will forever regret not saying NO to my dad and doing the history degree that I really wanted to do. I didnt know what I could have done with that degree, but I wanted to learn more history. If I had known that I could have become a librarian – I would have said NO to my dad. But HE (my dad) didnt think of my love for books and reading and HE never thought that maybe I could be a librarian!! No he just wanted me to be his clone and be an accountant,. I HATE MATHS!!!

Sorry about the rant – but by both my experience and my sons experience, i am learning that the assembly line education system clearly DOES NOT WORK!!!!

Frustration is a great teaching tool, = I needed to be able to read the rest of a book my teacher had started (about age 7-8-9?), So I got my dad to get a copy from a library and learned how to read. 14-minutes the first half page-chapter-one, 12-minutes the next page, 8-minutes the next page, I timed myself? 65+years ago ="Creating frustration in kids can be a great teaching tool"

If I had not been taught in the United States I would not have a Masters Degree today. I don't believe that our education system is dead. Our teachers do the best they can to teach a diverse number of students.

Comparing Death valley flowers & Finland to the US education system. Ideological idiot. Send him in the hood to tell the teachers it's their job to MAKE students want to learn while they're spitting on the teachers' faces. You need a culture of kids who are disciplined at home before they can do well in school. We dont reward such a culture in America. We reward people for being impulsive mouthy spoiled brats telling our kids how cute they are & how everyone's a winner. Not everyone's made out to be an intellectual. Some people just need to go into the trades for a living.

Modern education is slaughterhouse education and fails to answer even basic questions like the purpose of life. www.vanisource.org is a collection of simple and practical understanding of ancient Vedic wisdom and can easily solve all problems of life.

Job, perhaps, teaching adults how to read American English, without demeaning them. History, slavery has stories of much bloody tragedies. Texas, y'all are so loaded with denial, your guns will become jealous.

I’m so grateful for this because I was a child left behind and I never want the downfalls of the kind of public education I had for any child who has come after me in any arena of education. Private education willfully and readily leaves children behind based on that very narrow spectrum of achievement. AND WE GOTTA STOP MEDICATING “DIFFICULT” CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!

As he rightly denounced command-and-control 'education' as a condition under which students languish, he failed to identify the State —and its hallmark, coercion— as responsible for force-funding and force-populating such pits.

This should be reposted or recommended to everybody. Wonderful talk about learning and the passion of learning. Im currently doing teacher studies for High School in Norway, and this is allways what I tought about when I was a student. Making people WANT to learn. I had a teacher in siences who sparked my interest in space and the planets, this is what i want to do <3

8:30 "The role of a teacher is to facilitate learning, but the focus is on testing" testing should be diagnostic this was a wow moment for me so if you go through the education system and fail at the testing stage it is not you who has failed BUT the teachers and education system because they have failed in their sole purpose to facilitate your learning.

How much talent has been wasted over the years, buy a system that doesn't seeWhat a child can be, But rather what can we make of him.My complaint was , They teach us to know,when they should be teaching to understand

Having been part of the Finnish educational system I have to say: they did nurture us in creativity for the most part. Of course teachers are individuals, but the majority wanted us to ask questions. I had a great teacher of philosophy (also religion) in lukio, which is basically high school in the USA. He never imposed his learned ideas upon us. He was always up for debate and scratched the board if it meant a better could be drawn upon the wills of his students. Don't get the idea of a weak-willed person here! He definitely made you argue for you point and he could argue on the other side significantly. But he did alter the board from time to time and that was accepted to the tests including what you could find from the books. So testing wasn't altered by him giving creative foot there.

Now what I've got to say from the state of our current college approvals is quite the other tale: We have two different mathematics lines during lukio (high school-ish). You more likely get approved to any line if you mange better in the harder line of mathematics. It doesn't matter if you're going for physics or social studies. That makes no sense to me.

The other skewed thing is forced Swedish in our schools. From yläaste, which is basically junior high in the USA, you're forced to learn Swedish because of our tradition (which comes from the time we were part of Sweden – and it's protected by the upper class of Swedish-Finnish people who live in Finland. This wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't a requirement to complete your degree. I mean, a person living in the Eastern side of Finland would most likely live their life without ever needing the knowledge for Swedish in for their career… But Russians frequent them now and again. Why not force-teach that person Russian instead?

So Finland does have a creativity nurturing relationship with teaching. It's just that we're already taking notes from outside and random historical stuff burdens our educational system.

One day in the early 90s while in 2nd grade, I opened my aunt’s high school algebra book and tried to do some exercise problems. The next day, I brought my work to my teacher and asked her to double check my answers. She said, “That’s not algebra. Go sit down.” That’s when I realized grade school teachers had more important things to be concerned with than facilitate a love for learning.

In countries like Bangladesh ,India knowledge is not imparted but fed. Students literally vomit out whatever they learnt from notes n lectures in the exam. Parents act like shopkeepers who measures amount of things using a balance cuz parents here put their children in the balance n measure their result wrt their neighbors child's. Colleges here is like pressure cookers n teachers like fire. The education systems cooks us every day, every day.

The worst part is that I’m thinking of how I can personally try to make this man’s ideas a reality and I honestly can’t find any ways. We are so lost in the world of standardized education that we fail to see that creativity is what moves the world forward.

If we are to change the minds of our government, we need to change the minds of the voters. ie we need to convince parents that school does not have to be what it was when they were there. So many (traditional / conservative) parents expect their kids to be going through the same experience they had; or else, the teachers and the school are failing.

i am really empathize of his speeching. this is because south korea only studies for going more admittable university. therefore if students do not want to learn this, they do not study this. they must study this. therefore the system of south korea loses creativity from children. i wish he comes to south korea and please teaching people who work education fields.

Sir Ken Robinson needs to spend one week in an underprivileged school in Los Angeles. He would modify his talk from the gentle and humorous tones of intellectual, altruistic, and heart-warming messages to one of "Holy crap! How in the world can anyone manage a classroom full of angry, disobedient, loud, irreverent, disrespectful, and dangerous kids?" Until educators move from their glowing ideas into realistic student behavior, the wheel will keep turning with nothing accomplished. Start talking about student behavior. We have educationists sounding off all over the place year after year and more and nothing has changed. Investigate student behavior. Do you realize that in many schools the population showing up on Monday is very different than the one showing up on Friday? Student behavior. Start talking about student behavior. We have theories galore. Student behavior. Student behavior. Got it?

Here's my way to freedom and onto creativity: Read "The Artists Way" Julia Cameron. "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne. Brian Tracy, Earl Nightingale, Simon Sinek to start. Meditate, if u don't know how, LEARN. It will boost the mind and make it open to learning. Write a gratitude journal. Get connected to the Universe and ask it for your desires. Earn N. said in 'Lead the Field' – "Act the part of the successful person you have decided to become"

Typical stupid Americans always want to blame the teacher, never the kid. Notice how many Asian kids excel in American schools? They don’t have parents who do nothing but give excuses for them. I follow the advice of “tiger moms” and my child does great in school.

I have legitimately learned more from random youtube videos and google searches than from school. School just fills you up with information and formulas that you'll need for a test and never need again, so you just forget the bulk of what you're "taught".

I am a teacher, and I agree 100%. We are literally told “don’t teach” this and “don’t teach” that. We are encouraged to mold children into liberal non-thinking people. Some rincipals are not a fan of my style: teach children how to analyze ALL sides of subject and let them work out their feelings and opinions on their own; teach them to discuss and disagree on an intellectual level (instead of an emotional one)…they just might expand their knowledge and grow. Mmm…guess I’m pretty radical. This can only be done in private schools 👍. Public schools limit students from actually pulling ahead of the masses because it makes low acheivers feel bad about themselves. Many public schools cut their “gifted programs” and “fine arts” at the first stage of bujet cuts. 👎

Make this man the secretary of education (or the American equivalent)! He really hits the nail on the head for Western education. I'm a history and drama student, and I have never been supported in my decisions to study my passions. In the west, creativity is seen as a shameful hobby that is only a distraction from the core curriculum. Funnily enough, it's the arts and humanities that are remembered for hundreds of years and define the culture of a given place and time. We must support children who aren't English and Maths experts, because their talents are not lesser, nor is their nondiscriminatory curiosity.

one (of the thousands of) thing(s) i dont get about humanity is:that the majority mostly knows a way to improve stuff but we just dont do it!as if we say "it worked for centuries like that, it will work for the next few centuries as well!"but that thought stops progression and progression is basically what fuels us humans

It's all great fun, but in the end who really cares about this guy's opinion? You can easily criticize any educational system on the planet and make people clap to empty phrases like "children are different". What is needed is good research with solutions that have proven to work. I'm not really interested in learning what is broken. I want to know how to fix it.

This is an issue btw. that exists in many fields. Another very prominent one is nutrition. Everybody has an opinion on what's best but rarely anyone has any data that works for all of us. It's pseudo-science.

I mean, what else do you need to hear when he says, “The Americans asked the Finnish, ‘What do you do about the dropout rate?’ And the Finnish said, ‘We don’t have one. When someone wants to drop out, we give them help and we support them.’ “

"They're suffering from childhood." 5:45Yes, I understand what he means. People would consider me a child, but I feel as if I have grown up too fast. I don't get enough time to myself or to do what I enjoy."Curiosity." 6:25No one has lighted my spark, yet there is one subject I love and would enjoy learning about. However, I am not allowed to focus too much on it for others hold values such as being good at math or ELA. I usually strive in those subjects, yet only because I am pushed too. There are few things I enjoy, and I just wish I could pursue my dreams.There are MANY other wonderful things in this video. It is 2019 yet this speech is still very educational.Thank you Mr. Robinson.

Disruptive, narcissistic children in a group make learning for the remainder difficult; they sense the power this behaviour has over a group's efforts to the contrary….. Eventually, part of this cohort ends up sequestered….but only after their presence in "the school" has distorted good intents & progress…..

You explain the amount of money spent in education the same way you can explain the amount of money spent on the refugee children. The country spends around 800 dollars per day for each one of the children; however, they can't find a way to provide for toothbrush or facilitate for them to take a bath or change the diapers of the babies in the facilities.

– "The dominant culture of education has come to focus on not teaching and learning, but testing. Now, testing is important. Standardized tests have a place. But they should not be the dominant culture of education. They should be diagnostic. They should help"

– "Human life is inherently creative. It's the common currency of being a human being."

– "Education is not a mechanical system. It's a human system."

– "The real role in leadership in education is not and should not be command and control. The real role is climate control, creating a climate of possibility"

– "There are three kinds of people: those that are immovable, people who don't get it, that don't want to get it and don't want to do anything with it, those that are movable, people who see the need for change and are prepared to listen to it, and those who move, people who make things happen. And if we can move a lot of people that will be a movement. And if the movement is strong enough, that's, in the best sense of the word, a revolution. And that's what we need"